What we would say then, is that the story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it. That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly by all our serious histories of medicine and of science, should have been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even professors of science who want to know the history of their own sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation, still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to conviction. We would not leave the impression, moreover, that it was in medicine alone that the misunderstood Middle Ages made distinct progress in science. This is true in every department of what we now call natural science. {20} The reason for the false impression that science was not studied in the Middle Ages at the universities, is that the supposed historians of education and of science who have made such declarations have never taken the trouble to look into the works of the great writers of this period. Anyone who does so, at once changes his opinion in this matter. Humboldt, for instance, the great German natural philosopher, has given ample credit to these colleagues of his, who lived some six centuries before him, yet did such wonderful work in spite of their inadequate means and the fact that they were as yet only groping in the darkness of the beginnings of science. Whewell, the English historian of the inductive sciences, has also proved sympathetic to these old philosophers, and especially to Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. Those who so ignorantly but with a pretense of knowledge make little of the science of the Middle Ages, know nothing of the real accomplishments of such men as Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Arnold of Villanova, nor Vincent of Beauvais, the encyclopedist. As is always the case, however, the ignorance of supposed historians of science and education in this matter, has only served to emphasize the presumptuous assurance of their declarations as to the intolerance of the Middle Ages toward scientific progress. It is ever the ignorant man who has the least doubt about his opinions.